Student engineers design environmentally safe, portable bug trap

On April 27, 2007, Hans Yeakel, an industrial engineering senior, inspects the interior of a battery-operated bug trap designed in part by University of Florida engineering undergraduates. Unlike traditional bug zappers, which blow bugs into thousands of tiny pieces potentially containing colonies of bacteria, the trap draws flies to a sticky glue strip in a disposable cartridge. Florida-based Nacon Technologies, which will soon market a plug-in version of the trap, tapped the students to design the battery operated version for use by the military, campers and others. The work was done through the engineering college’s Integrated Product and Process Design program, which pairs student teams with corporate or government sponsors for yearlong design projects.